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I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and

I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and pass Nikon until the digital era. Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. These were all big deals in the era when every frame was precious and mistakes were hidden until it's too late (after the film was developed). In digital cameras their AF system is now on par, and auto exposure is just less important in general because of the ease of reviewing and post-processing for exposure. They started moving past Nikon about 15 years ago by creating sensors that were cheaper, larger, and had lower noise. Since then they have filled in gaps in their lens lines, and used their expertise in video, to maintain their lead.

jonknee 8y ago
Well that and there is almost no market for new film cameras.
- sjm-lbm 8y ago
  Right. Most advances Canon has made in SLRs (say, the AF upgrades the comment you are replying to above mentions) could be easily 'backported' to a film camera: in a real SLR, the sensor isn't exposed to light until the picture is ready to be taken and focus/exposure settings have already been decided, so it's not like those features rely on the digital image sensor in any way. The reason why Canon doesn't make a film SLR that includes the features that bring their cameras ahead of Nikon is because they don't think enough people will want to pay for them. And that's probably right.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    The reason why AF for film is hard is because AF tends to move around the point of best focus and moving a lens is terribly slow compared to the inter-frame time. So you simply don't have the time to figure out what the ideal focus is while shooting film, especially not if camera and/or subject are moving, which is sort of the whole reason for shooting video to begin with.
    - CarVac 8y ago
      Film still cameras, not film cinema cameras.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        Ah sorry. That's a Dutchism, 'film' here is moving.
    - kristoffer 8y ago
      You’re confusing film and video. Anyway (D)SLR use phase detect autofocus in which you don’t have to figure out much at all. Mirrorless is another thing.
- vvanders 8y ago
  I'd argue there is for Medium/Large format, but that's a whole different ballgame compared to consumer SLRs. Last time I looked the digital back for a Hasselblad was ~$30k.
  - wl 8y ago
    Maybe the market for medium format film is better, but my experience with large format is that people practically give the gear away.
    - lb1lf 8y ago
      That depends. Sure, you can dip your toes in the large format pool quite cheaply (everything, as they say, is relative!) - but the fancier optics and cameras get pretty expensive pretty fast. (Not to mention the cost of 4x5 or (shudder!) 8x10 processing; B&W is eminently doable in the home, but IMHO where LF really, really shines is with dias film - developing that at home is not for the faint of heart.)
  - jonknee 8y ago
    And in the scheme of things there is almost no market for medium / large format cameras (digital or otherwise).
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      Of course there is a market. Look at used cameras, they sell at very high prices. There is no "mass market", but there is definitely one with quite a few people willing to pay premium for high end film cameras.
      - jonknee 8y ago
        That's why I said "in the scheme of things". It's a tiny business. I love cameras and will probably have a medium format digital camera at some point, but it's a tiny business that can't move the needle in a $34b company like Canon. Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  No need. Even film cameras from the early 2000s sell for quite cheap these days and take excellent photos. What matters for film more is the end medium, i.e. the film itself. The optics and sensors make it easier to take good pictures but that hasn't changed the game for film since the 70s, except for specific things like sports where having a camera that can take 6fps was a great feature.
  - cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
    I remember my dad going to all of our family gatherings and baseball/basketball/soccer games with his trusty Canon A-1. He passed it along with a few of the lenses he no longer needed when he moved to a Canon SLR, and it's been my trusty sidekick when documenting family gatherings and niece/nephew's baseball/basketball/soccer games (though it helps my {brother,sister}s{,-in-law} don't share pictures on Facebook - they want a nice scrapbook like their parents had for them).
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  Sure, but Nikon and Leica still sell 35mm film cameras. I think that because they were the dominant brands in 35mm in the film era, they still have fans today among people who still like to shoot film.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Almost no - but what tiny market there is, is growing. My favorite pet project to watch right now is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bringing-back-the-analogue-slr-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bri...
- anta40 8y ago
  Well, there are always exceptions. Leica still make film cameras: https://us.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M-A https://us.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M-A https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1082912-REG/leica_10370_m_a_rangefinder_camera_body.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1082912-REG/leica_103... No autofocus, no auto-exposure, and costs almost $4700 body only. Not something the typical film shooters will use, though :p
bitL 8y ago
What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes etc.).
- msbarnett 8y ago
  Canon had an early lead in sensor noise (they bet big on CMOS early on when most of the market was treating CCD as the future), from the early 2000s up until Sony moved to on-chip ADC around 2009-2010 and Nikon adopted their sensors wholesale. It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony was certainly far ahead of the game.
  - giobox 8y ago
    Exactly this. Canon had significant performance advantages in the mid 2000s thanks to their bet on CMOS technology when almost everyone else believed CCD had superior image quality. This really showed in the clean high ISO performance one got in their DSLRs vs the competition at that time, and it took a long while for competition to really catch up. This reminds me when the first “affordable” DSLRs from canon and Nikon arrived - both 6 megapixel models (the Canon 300D/Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70). The D70 was the better camera in a great many ways, but many buyers still chose the 300D to get access to the incredibly good for the time low noise CMOS sensor. I can’t count the number of discussions I had with friends looking to get a first DSLR debating the relative merits of those two landmark cameras. A later firmware hack for the 300D that gave it almost all the features of the more expensive 10D made this debate very interesting as well. The past 5 years are less impressive though, for sure, with the great sensor hardware from Sony etc.
- gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
  Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself. That said, Canon has historically been the winner with their lens selection, and IMO UX. Sony is quickly catching up, or even surpassing them though with e-mount, especially now that more 3rd party lens manufacturers are killing it (Sigma). I also like EVFs more than OVFs since you get a better exposure preview and focus peeking for manual focus. I really, really, really wanted to buy a Sony a7, but I ended up buying a Canon 6d due to lens selection a few years ago (and the Canon beat them on price). I'm a huge fan of mirrorless tech and I'm actually surprised that SLRs are still around. The camera body is being commoditized. I'm a canon fan and hope they catch up with a full frame mirrorless, my buddy who follows the tech more said he's heard rumors that they are releasing one next year?
deleted 8y ago
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anthonybsd 8y ago
>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofocus (Ultrasonic line), which took Nikon more than a decade to catch up to. Same with exposure zones and metering accuracy combined with extremely fast drives - this basically meant that Canon took over sports photography in the mid 90s.
- stan_rogers 8y ago
  Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.
    - foobar1962 8y ago
      Sony bought part of the Minolta/ Konica camera business. Minolta had an AF slr very early in the game iirc. They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.
      - stan_rogers 8y ago
        They actually had a pretty extensive range of lenses and accessories (bulk film backs, drives and grips, etc.), and had those cool white f/2.8 zooms and teles before Canon did. Some of those lenses, like the 24mm VFC (variable field curvature), were unique to the line and allowed a photographer to pull off shots that wouldn't be practical again until digital composition (focus stacking, etc.) came along. They also had a decent TTL flash system way ahead of the game - you could pull a full-on Joe McNally job, but you needed to do it cabled. Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.

jonknee 8y ago

Well that and there is almost no market for new film cameras.

sjm-lbm 8y ago
Right. Most advances Canon has made in SLRs (say, the AF upgrades the comment you are replying to above mentions) could be easily 'backported' to a film camera: in a real SLR, the sensor isn't exposed to light until the picture is ready to be taken and focus/exposure settings have already been decided, so it's not like those features rely on the digital image sensor in any way. The reason why Canon doesn't make a film SLR that includes the features that bring their cameras ahead of Nikon is because they don't think enough people will want to pay for them. And that's probably right.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  The reason why AF for film is hard is because AF tends to move around the point of best focus and moving a lens is terribly slow compared to the inter-frame time. So you simply don't have the time to figure out what the ideal focus is while shooting film, especially not if camera and/or subject are moving, which is sort of the whole reason for shooting video to begin with.
  - CarVac 8y ago
    Film still cameras, not film cinema cameras.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Ah sorry. That's a Dutchism, 'film' here is moving.
  - kristoffer 8y ago
    You’re confusing film and video. Anyway (D)SLR use phase detect autofocus in which you don’t have to figure out much at all. Mirrorless is another thing.
vvanders 8y ago
I'd argue there is for Medium/Large format, but that's a whole different ballgame compared to consumer SLRs. Last time I looked the digital back for a Hasselblad was ~$30k.
- wl 8y ago
  Maybe the market for medium format film is better, but my experience with large format is that people practically give the gear away.
  - lb1lf 8y ago
    That depends. Sure, you can dip your toes in the large format pool quite cheaply (everything, as they say, is relative!) - but the fancier optics and cameras get pretty expensive pretty fast. (Not to mention the cost of 4x5 or (shudder!) 8x10 processing; B&W is eminently doable in the home, but IMHO where LF really, really shines is with dias film - developing that at home is not for the faint of heart.)
- jonknee 8y ago
  And in the scheme of things there is almost no market for medium / large format cameras (digital or otherwise).
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Of course there is a market. Look at used cameras, they sell at very high prices. There is no "mass market", but there is definitely one with quite a few people willing to pay premium for high end film cameras.
    - jonknee 8y ago
      That's why I said "in the scheme of things". It's a tiny business. I love cameras and will probably have a medium format digital camera at some point, but it's a tiny business that can't move the needle in a $34b company like Canon. Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.
ekianjo 8y ago
No need. Even film cameras from the early 2000s sell for quite cheap these days and take excellent photos. What matters for film more is the end medium, i.e. the film itself. The optics and sensors make it easier to take good pictures but that hasn't changed the game for film since the 70s, except for specific things like sports where having a camera that can take 6fps was a great feature.
- cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
  I remember my dad going to all of our family gatherings and baseball/basketball/soccer games with his trusty Canon A-1. He passed it along with a few of the lenses he no longer needed when he moved to a Canon SLR, and it's been my trusty sidekick when documenting family gatherings and niece/nephew's baseball/basketball/soccer games (though it helps my {brother,sister}s{,-in-law} don't share pictures on Facebook - they want a nice scrapbook like their parents had for them).
snowwrestler 8y ago
Sure, but Nikon and Leica still sell 35mm film cameras. I think that because they were the dominant brands in 35mm in the film era, they still have fans today among people who still like to shoot film.
jacobush 8y ago
Almost no - but what tiny market there is, is growing. My favorite pet project to watch right now is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bringing-back-the-analogue-slr-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bri...
anta40 8y ago
Well, there are always exceptions. Leica still make film cameras: https://us.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M-A https://us.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M-A https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1082912-REG/leica_10370_m_a_rangefinder_camera_body.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1082912-REG/leica_103... No autofocus, no auto-exposure, and costs almost $4700 body only. Not something the typical film shooters will use, though :p

bitL 8y ago

What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes etc.).

msbarnett 8y ago
Canon had an early lead in sensor noise (they bet big on CMOS early on when most of the market was treating CCD as the future), from the early 2000s up until Sony moved to on-chip ADC around 2009-2010 and Nikon adopted their sensors wholesale. It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony was certainly far ahead of the game.
- giobox 8y ago
  Exactly this. Canon had significant performance advantages in the mid 2000s thanks to their bet on CMOS technology when almost everyone else believed CCD had superior image quality. This really showed in the clean high ISO performance one got in their DSLRs vs the competition at that time, and it took a long while for competition to really catch up. This reminds me when the first “affordable” DSLRs from canon and Nikon arrived - both 6 megapixel models (the Canon 300D/Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70). The D70 was the better camera in a great many ways, but many buyers still chose the 300D to get access to the incredibly good for the time low noise CMOS sensor. I can’t count the number of discussions I had with friends looking to get a first DSLR debating the relative merits of those two landmark cameras. A later firmware hack for the 300D that gave it almost all the features of the more expensive 10D made this debate very interesting as well. The past 5 years are less impressive though, for sure, with the great sensor hardware from Sony etc.
gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself. That said, Canon has historically been the winner with their lens selection, and IMO UX. Sony is quickly catching up, or even surpassing them though with e-mount, especially now that more 3rd party lens manufacturers are killing it (Sigma). I also like EVFs more than OVFs since you get a better exposure preview and focus peeking for manual focus. I really, really, really wanted to buy a Sony a7, but I ended up buying a Canon 6d due to lens selection a few years ago (and the Canon beat them on price). I'm a huge fan of mirrorless tech and I'm actually surprised that SLRs are still around. The camera body is being commoditized. I'm a canon fan and hope they catch up with a full frame mirrorless, my buddy who follows the tech more said he's heard rumors that they are releasing one next year?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

anthonybsd 8y ago

>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofocus (Ultrasonic line), which took Nikon more than a decade to catch up to. Same with exposure zones and metering accuracy combined with extremely fast drives - this basically meant that Canon took over sports photography in the mid 90s.

stan_rogers 8y ago
Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.
  - foobar1962 8y ago
    Sony bought part of the Minolta/ Konica camera business. Minolta had an AF slr very early in the game iirc. They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.
    - stan_rogers 8y ago
      They actually had a pretty extensive range of lenses and accessories (bulk film backs, drives and grips, etc.), and had those cool white f/2.8 zooms and teles before Canon did. Some of those lenses, like the 24mm VFC (variable field curvature), were unique to the line and allowed a photographer to pull off shots that wouldn't be practical again until digital composition (focus stacking, etc.) came along. They also had a decent TTL flash system way ahead of the game - you could pull a full-on Joe McNally job, but you needed to do it cabled. Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.